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After a recent bath, Mbot, in his winged Red Fish towel, realized he might be wearing a garment that would allow him to fly. “Mom! I’m going to fly!” he announced. He mounted the steps of his bunk bed.

He raised his arms wide.

He leapt.

He landed. Ker-plop.

I waited.

He said: “I think I need to start from higher.”

He climbed higher.

He raised his arms wide.

He leapt.

He landed, ker-plop.

He said: “I think I need to flap my arms faster.”

He climbed up again. He raised his arms wide. He leapt. He flapped.

He landed, ker-plop.

He looked at me. He said, “I think I’m more of a gliding creature.”

And that was the end of that.

I thought, my heavens, if everyone figured out the truth about their own natures–and accepted it–so readily, what a different world we’d live in. I wondered about myself and some of my own unfulfilled ambitions, the terrycloth fins I spread.

Even if we dream of being flying creatures, is it so bad to discover that we are only gliding creatures, in the end?

All those continents keep us from getting squashed together when we go to restaurants. By Gbot.

From the back seat on the way to school this morning:

Mbot: “Mom, why aren’t there any humans on other planets?”

Me: “Well, because the Earth is the only planet that we know of that has the right environment for humans.”

Gbot: “Because the Earth is not too big, and it’s not too small. And it has all the continents. Pluto does not have any continents. And so all the people would get squashed together if they tried to go to restaurants, or shopping, or school.”

Pause.

Mbot: “Oh, you can’t plant any seeds on Pluto.”

Pause.

Gbot: “Even there are no cats.”

These answers satisfied us all, and off the bots went to school, to learn even more.

“Rejoice! For new life bursteth out of shell and room, and will astound you with its very aliveness, even in the darkest hour.” (Madeupians 3:30) (Come back later for an explanation of the outfits.)

Dear Easter Bunny,

I realize that Easter is a time for rejoicing, but next year, I’d like to do a little less of it.

Next year, please do not stop at our house first, like you did this year. I appreciate your thinking that, with duty done, you could sleep peacefully through the night, eliminating a 5 a.m. wake-up call for basket dispersal, but it did not work that way. This is how it worked:

Mbot woke up at 2:30 a.m., discovered his Easter Basket and called out to me gleefully. I staggered, still half-asleep, to his room chirping, “Wonderful, Sweetpea!” to find him in a fully lit bedroom; I had never before realized that we’d installed stadium lighting. I squinted in the glare at Mbot, fully animated and investigating the contents of his Easter basket with his tonsils. After joining him in rejoicing in his good fortune for ten minutes, I convinced him to return to bed, curled up with the stuffed snake the Easter bunny had brought. I turned down the lights.

I went back to bed, rejoiceful. And if that is not a word, it should be.

At 3 a.m., I was just drifting back to sleep when a high, joyful call pierced my semi-conscious state. Gbot. I stumbled down the hall again, chirping, “Wonderful, Sweetpea!” and into the stadium lights under which both bots now crouched, unwrapping chocolate bunny bars with vim. I pulled up a chair and sat, in order to rejoice with a lower heartrate–one that might mimic the forty beats per minute of sleep. I exclaimed happily for ten minutes, after which I convinced them back into their beds. I turned down the lights. I went back to bed. I rejoiced at this.

At 3:30 a.m., I tried to tell myself that the familiar footfall marking Gbot’s approach down the darkened hall was just my imagination. “Mom,” he said softly, dispelling my fantasy, “Spruce Bear is not in my bed.” I remembered that at bedtime the night before, I hadn’t been able to find Sprucie, and put Gbot to bed hoping the absence would not be noted. Fat fluffing chance. I rose. Together, we went looking for Spruce Bear, who we eventually found, reclining in a particularly beautifully dark corner of the living room. I rejoiced with Gbot at finding his bear.

I went back to bed. I rejoiced again.

At 4 a.m., Gbot’s angelic voice entered a dream in which I was superbly prepared and extremely confident. “Husbot,” I said, “Could you please go this time.”

Husbot pretended to be asleep, but I knew he wasn’t, because he’d just hacked up something that his allergies had deposited behind his uvula. I repeated myself.

“He’s calling for you,” said Husbot. He’d gone to bed grumpy with me for being grumpy with him for something that, due to lack of sleep, I can no longer clearly recall.

“Please,” I said.

He rose, muttering, and shuffled out into the hall. I sank back into my pillow, highly rejoiceful. I tried to re-enter my dream, unsuccessfully, but apparently sleep found me, because the next thing I knew, Mbot was on the bed, telling me it was morning! Not just any morning, but Easter morning, and the Easter Bunny had come. A blissfully soft natural light glowed through my closed lids from the bedroom window. I rejoiced at soft natural lighting.

Husbot took the bots in the car to get special juice. I have never rejoiced so deeply in the existence of special juice or, for that matter, cars, or Husbot. I lay unmoving for another forty-five minutes, rejoicing in the marvel of the modern mattress.

So, Easter Bunny, just as a recap: Please stop at our house last next year, so I can rejoice in the exuberance of life, the joy of the new, and the miracle of transformation of one’s bedroom from barren to brimming with never-before-allowed-candy — after six a.m.

I admit, a month ago, I didn’t know who Ben 10 was. Then, at the bots’ request, I downloaded a Ben 10 video game onto their LeapPads. What I have learned since is that Ben Ten “was just an ordinary kid” (that is what the rockin’ theme song tells us, or is it “is no ordinary kid?’ None of us can tell). At any rate, he found an alien watch with special powers that can turn him into ten different aliens with superpowers by mixing the alien DNA in the watch with Ben’s DNA. In my experience, at least with boy children, this sort of thing happens all the time, so I’m guessing the theme song says he’s an ordinary boy.

So yesterday, while I was making an omelet for Gbot and scrambled eggs for Mbot, Mbot asked: “Mom, how come some chickens have chicks, and some just lay eggs that we eat?”

I batted blind. “Well….if a chicken lays an egg, then it’s just an egg that we eat. But if a rooster fertilizes the egg, then it hatches and a chick comes out.”

Mbot, the farmer’s son: “Oh, I know what fertilizer is! So he POOPS on it?”

Me: “Well….no. ‘Fertilize‘ means that you make something grow better, so the rooster makes it grow better, and it grows into a chicken.” I continued preparing breakfast, terrified that I would have to start explaining process.

“Mbot: “Oh, yeah! Like the rooster’s DNA mixes with the chicken’s DNA!”

Me: “That’s exactly right!”

Mbot: “So could you make a half-eagle/half-chicken?”

“Me: “Well….”Scientists are working on it.”

And then we ate our eggs. The kind without rooster deoxyribonucleic acid.

It was not long after Mbot’s fifth birthday. It seemed all the toys he’d received at his party were breaking because they had outlived their unwritten life-expectancy of three weeks, or collecting dust, because they’d entered the boring zone.

The idea of robots originated with Mbot’s very first show-and-tell, over two years ago.

On the eve of his first show-and-tell, we (I use the term very loosely) made a recycle robot for his first preschool show-and-tell–not because we were trying to be clever, but because we were panicky and desperate (again, the term “we” used loosely). I documented that event in my post, Recycle Robot vs. Sister Mary Villus. Ever since, I secretly wanted to make more.

So I’d been piling recyclables in the garage–not all of them of course, but the choice items with interesting shapes or moving parts (cardboard tubes, ketchup bottles, wipies lids), in preparation for a recycle party that we hadn’t had. I envisioned inviting over some of the bots’ friends and making cool stuff out of all the cool stuff that other people thought were trash.

We have yet to have our recycle party, but I started partying with recyclables by myself. While During the seven weeks that I was going through radiation, I promised myself that I wouldn’t push myself too hard. I wouldn’t try to make headway on any of my writing projects. I would be kind to myself. I would have fun. I decided it was time to get out the pile o’ trash. I made these three dudes as toys for the weebots. They’re all about twenty inches tall (antennae not included) and have swiveling heads, moving arms, grasping hands, and secret compartments. I avoided using brads or any metal parts, for safety reasons.

What I didn’t know before I made the recycle robots is that they would turn out to be the perfect toys. Why?

1. They are cheap. They are made out of garbage!

2. When they break, I can fix them myself, because I made them in the first place!

3. When the bots get bored with them, I can change them! They will seem new again!

4. They can serve as friends, targets for Tae Kwon Do kicks, storage containers for other toys, or piggy banks. And it’s always nice to have a friend who’s also a piggy bank.

6. They can double as décor by adding a test tube filled with water and a flower.

Wouldn’t you love to have him holding out a flower to you all day? (No test tube in this picture; I added it later.)

7. They have turned my own weebots into lean, green, recycle machines; their favorite craft now is collecting junk, gluing it together, and adding eyes. They can, literally, make their own friends.

Fresh off his shift as a sparring partner, Joebot becomes a handy Lego container. (At far left, Mbot’s speedboat, complete with a hatch that opens into a raisin box filled with ninjas that look a lot like wine corks.)

My friend Solveig, who’s been around since the failed Scotch sewing machine days, dubbed the robots–and we who make them–the Recycle Robot League.

Thanks to St. Peter’s Montessori Fall Festival–where, after three weeks of collecting recyclables, the children built their own recycle robots–there are now nearly fifty members!

It is very cool to have a hungry robot bigger than yourself greet you at school!

Next week, I’ll post pictures of the kids’ robonderful creations. Toilet paper tubes have never had such a shiny future.

When a friend asked for step-by-step instructions so she could make them with her eight-year-old homeschooled twins, I sat down to write them, and at her prompting, made them downloadable on Etsy.com for $.99. The process that actually made the robots better, because I wanted to make sure to include tips on how to reinforce their bods to make them as durable as possible. Because while it’s great to be able to whip out a glue gun for a quick fix, it’s even better not to have to!

Against all odds, I remembered this morning that today is Picture Day.

I wonder that the School Picture hasn’t gone the way of the Scratch ‘n’ Sniff t-shirt in an age where a teacher can just whip out her cell phone during class and upload, but apparently, there is still a market for generic photos of overdressed children.

They are hard to take seriously.

Even so, I pulled out the bots’ wedding outfits–buttondown shirts and nice pants. We attended a beautiful family wedding this past weekend and I took no pictures, so I figured I’d let Special EFX capture the bots’ Wedding Look.

But everyone knows you do your hair first.

Mbot’s coif was in its usual morning Harry Potter look-alike mode, so I dribbled a little water on it while he was rinsing toothpaste out of his mouth, and plugged in the blow dryer. He was excited about the blow dryer. He wanted to do his hair himself. I set the switch to “cool” and figured it’d be safe to go finish packing lunchboxes.

Silly me. I’d thought “cool” referred to temperature.

Several minutes later, the following conversation ensued over the sound of the blow dryer:

Gbot: “Mbot, are you done yet? Your hair looks completely perfect!”

Mbot: “I’m trying to make a Mohawk. Where’s the water, Gbot?”

Gbot: “I can get the water cup and fill it up!”

Pause.

Gbot: “Here is the water!”

Mbot: “Okay, pour it on something!”

Gbot: “You mean your hair?”

Mbot: “No, a towel!”

Pause.

Gbot: “I brought you the towel!”

Mbot: “Now, pour water on it!”

Pause.

Mbot: “Thanks!”

Just another day at Salon des Petites Coiffeurs

Now we’re gonna have to start a boy band.

Then it was Gbot’s turn with the blowdryer.

The updo, re-imagined.

Then, for some reason, perhaps because he likes playing with water, Gbot dampened his hair again.

But he didn’t realize the effect applying water would have.

Gbot: “Oh, my hair is back to curly! My fashion’s wearing off!”

Mbot: “I’m going to try to cool it outside.”

(Rushes out the front door to cool his hair.)

Mbot (rushing back inside): “Oh, I need to see if my fashion’s wearing off!”

They spent the ride to school discussing which world they were going to choose to have their picture taken in. These were their world choices:

Yikes.

I decided that DP140 was the lesser of the cheevils (cheesy evils), because, with the fanciful mushrooms and far-off castle, at least it didn’t look like it was trying to fool us into thinking it might be real. Mbot was very excited by the possibility of going into Mushroom World. Then I had to explain to the bots that they would not, in fact, be going into Mushroom World. The mushrooms would be added on a computer. They took it pretty well. Although, when we get the pictures back, Gbot, who preferred River World, might be disappointed to find that I sent him to Mushroom World instead.

When we hugged goodbye at school, Mbot was concerned that I not mess up his hair.

Mbot: “What if someone else messes it up?”

Me: “Then just say, ‘Hands off the ‘do, Dude!'”

Pause.

Mbot: “I think I would feel a little bit foolish saying ‘Hands off the ‘do, Dude.'”

Me: “Then just ask them nicely not to touch your hair.”

And off they went, leaving me very glad I live in Bot World, and that it’s not just in my computer.

Don’t touch this. (And yes, up at the very top, that’s Gbot in the mirror, getting his fashion on.)